Skagit County details roughly $25 million in ARPA spending on public health, shelters, broadband and behavioral health

SKAGIT COUNTY, Wash. — Skagit County officials on July 8 outlined how roughly $25 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds were spent to respond to COVID-19 impacts and to shore up public-health, emergency-management, housing and behavioral-health capacity.

Jennifer Johnson, deputy administrator for Skagit County, briefed the Board of County Commissioners on investments made from the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds provided under the American Rescue Plan Act and related U.S. Department of the Treasury guidance. She said the county received about $25 million in two payments and used the funds across a set of commissioner-established priorities.

The presentation, delivered at the commissioners’ regular meeting, described major spending areas: public health workforce and mobile vaccination/testing clinics; roughly $1.1 million for emergency-management equipment and an incident-command van; more than $5.7 million directed to social-safety-net programs; over $5.7 million toward behavioral-health programs; roughly $2 million for court and probation backlog relief; investments in business and workforce support; nearly $1 million for broadband planning and mapping; and about $2 million spent on shelter and motel programs for people experiencing homelessness.

Johnson said the county used ARPA dollars to expand public-health staffing and infrastructure, operate low-barrier testing and vaccination sites (including at Skagit Valley College, the Skagit County Fairgrounds and a Burlington mall location), and to create a local Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) after initially…